


If She Doesn't Scare You, No Evil Thing Will

by melodious-sitarist (gardenofshadows)



Category: 101 Dalmatians (1961), Disney - All Media Types, Final Fantasy VII, Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Gen, but yolo, gratuitous headcanoning, i'm sure this is only funny to me, lea is reno's brother
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-17
Updated: 2020-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:21:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23179900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardenofshadows/pseuds/melodious-sitarist
Summary: Did you ever wonder just how the 99 Dalmatian puppies ended up in boxes, scattered around the worlds?  Well, it's all thanks to Traverse Town's favorite security guys-slash-enforcers, the Turks.  They've got a job to do, but they might just be in over their heads.  Also contains Cruella de Vil in a rocket ship.  Because reasons.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 12





	If She Doesn't Scare You, No Evil Thing Will

**Author's Note:**

> This is pure, self-indulgent, cracky nonsense based on my personal headcanons. Sorry not sorry.

Traverse Town was a sleepy little place. It should have been welcome, after the chaos of the Fall of Radiant Garden nine years ago. Shinra Co. took good care of the populace, providing electricity and security for those displaced here. It should have been a nice, easy life (if you didn’t think too hard about where that power came from).

It was downright dull.

Reno Sinclair leaned back in his chair, licking the last vestiges of seasalt ice cream off its wooden stick. His partner, Rude, sat across him, face impassive beneath his dark sunglasses. Reno idly wondered if his best friend was awake. “Remember how my brother used to obsess over this stuff?” he wondered, without really expecting a response. “I mean, it’s good and all, but he wouldn’t eat anything else.”

Something like sympathy passed over Rude’s stony face. Reno’s younger brother Lea had been missing since before the Fall. They both knew his senseless prattle was the symptom of a wound that would never really heal.

Reno let thoughts of Lea vanish and kicked his feet onto the table, tossing the ice cream stick in the general vicinity of the trash can. “Man, what’s the point of being the security guys in a podunk little town like this? At least in Radiant Garden, there was some action.”

At that moment, the door openen. Reno’s chair slammed back onto all four legs as he pretended to be professional. Well, inasmuch as he could be professional when faced with a knockout strawberry blonde with hornrimmed glasses perched on a cute pixie nose. Reno tossed his long, red ponytail back and pasted on the charming grin that made Rude roll his eyes. Then, behind her, a gangly blonde man with a large nose approached, leading two large white dogs peppered with black spots. The hand not holding the dogs’ leashes came down to rest on the woman’s shoulder, and Reno spotted a gleaming gold ring. Damn. Married.

“What can we do for you?” Rude said. It was a mark of how enamored Reno was with goggling the woman that the stoic’s soft, low voice spoke up first.

“We’re terribly sorry to intrude,” said the man in his British accent. “Roger and Anita Radcliffe. We need your help. Our puppies are missing.” One of the dogs- the female, Reno judged- gave a soft, high-pitched whine. Her mate licked her face, but his expression was just as downcast.

Reno almost protested that they weren’t exactly a detective agency, but the pretty lady spoke up. “We don’t know where to turn,” Anita said in a voice choked with unshed tears. Mr. Leonhart’s been looking everywhere. There’s no sign of them anywhere.”

“Oh, there are signs,” Roger said darkly.

“Like?” the redhead pushed. Well, maybe Shinra’s security goons could be persuaded to play detective. Just this once.

Anita cast her husband a sharp look. “He thinks he’s seen traces of gummi ship exhaust on the roof above our home. As if that proves anything!”

“It proves the puppies are on another world,” noted Roger. “And I know just who took them, if only we can find someone to catch her.”

“Roger, I admit she’s eccentric, but she’s not a thief!” Anita protested.

“Well, she’s number one suspect in my book,” Roger argued.

“Who?” asked Rude. Though he stood watching the scene with no more expression than part of the wall, Reno just knew he’d been filing away the details of the case. Getting them memorized,as his dork of a little brother would say.

“Cruella de Vil,” Roger declared. Hatred dripped from his voice like acid. “An old school friend of Anita’s.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Reno said, holding up his hand. “Hold on. You guys know a lady named cruel devil and you don’t suspect her?”

“It’s true that she was oddly insistent to know when the puppies were born…” Anita mused slowly. “And she was awfully upset when Roger refused to sell them.”

“And she has a gummi ship,” Roger finished.

“So do we,” Reno announced. His hair swished behind him as he hopped to his feet. “Come on, Rude. We’re doing some sleuthing.” Without even a goodbye to their new clients, he sauntered out to Shinra’s gummi garage.

The Neo Turk Light gleamed black in the fluorescent lights of the hangar. “Oh, yeah. Daddy missed you,” Reno purred as he slid into the helicopter’s leather seats. Rude rolled his eyes. “What? We were just talking about how we were itching for a scrap.” 

“You were talking,” Rude corrected.

Reno snickered in response. The Neo Turk Light’s blades whirred to life at the push of a button, raising the chopper into the air. The walls of the hanger rushed upwards on either side. Soon, the warm glow of Traverse Town’s streetlamps became tiny pinpricks below them, supplied by their very own Shinra Electric Power Company, thank you very much. The Lanes Between shimmered and drifted outside the windshield, shifting endlessly from periwinkle blue to lavender purple to seafoam green.

“Do you know where you’re going?” Rude asked hours later. Worlds upon worlds drifted past, with none looking like particularly promising hiding places for fifteen spotted puppies.

“Not a clue,” Reno announced, folding his arms behind his head. “I figure we’ll know when we see h-- what the hell! The Neo Turk Light lurched wildly in mid-air as something huge smashed into her from behind.

A long red gummi ship swerved up beside them, decked with black wings and chrome detailing. Putrid green smoke billowed from the exhaust instead of the usual bright purple sparks. “Watch your driving, you idiots!” snarled the driver through her communicator. The skeletally thin woman with hair half black and half white sneered out the window. Too much eyeshadow and blush tried and failed to add some color to her corpselike face. An enormous fur coat shrouded her frail frame, making her appear much larger than life.

“Us?!” Reno retorted. He leaned halfway out of the gummi-copter’s window to snap at the woman. “You hit us!” But she didn’t hear. She’d already sped off, swerving and rolling through space. Reno wondered how she wasn’t nauseous. “Ugh. How bad’s the damage?”

But for once, Rude wasn’t paying attention to that. “Look.” He pointed his gloved hand at the silhouette of the appalling driver. The plate on the back of her ship read DE VIL.

“Hey!” Reno said, brightening up. “Looks like we found our girl. Let’s see if Shinra’s interrogation techniques still hold up.” He pushed the joystick forward, making the blades whir louder as the Neo Turk Light sped up. And he was careful not to hit her, too.

“‘Scuse me, ma’am?” Reno called through his comm. Her deranged eyes snapped in his general direction.

Knowing Reno lacked the delicacy for this job, Rude took the comm from his hands. “We’re from Shinra Electric Power Company. We got a tasty little commission from Roger and Anita Radclifffe---”

SCREEEEECH. The red ship surged forward, scraping against the Neo Turk Light’s blades and covering the windshield with that foul green smoke. “You’ll never take them alive!” howled the other vehicle’s comm.

“So, she wants to race, huh? We’ll give her a race.” Reno gunned his copter again. This time, when they approached, frenzied barking sounded unmistakably from the ship. It was hard to tell through the haze of smoke, but he was sure he could see tiny paws pressing against the back of the cockpit.

Cruella swerved again, crashlanding onto a red-and-black checked world dotted with a long labyrinth of hedges. As the red ship bounced down the rabbit hole, Reno caught a glimpse inside the smashed cockpit.

“That is way more than fifteen puppies,” Reno remarked. Several of the little spotty things bounced out of the cracks.

Rude dove for the joystick, urging the Neo Turk Light forward in an attempt to recapture the dogs. Somehow, incredibly, they failed. One moment a dozen small pups sat dazed in between the two ships. The next, the ground erupted in black spots, not unlike the ones adorning their coats. And the pups were gone.

Cruella cackled at them from the damaged cockpit. “So, you thought you could outwit Cruella?” she laughed. And she was gone in another cloud of green smoke. This same nonsense went on and on, throughout a desert wasteland, a dense jungle, even the inside of a massive whale floating inexplicably through space. Getting out of that one was not fun. Each world they crashed on, Cruella’s ship fell to pieces until finally, she floated on a bare engine held together by scattered scraps of red gummi.

“This,” panted Reno, “is not worth it.”

“Look. She’s going down.” And she was, right onto a world crawling with inky darkness. The spires of a ruined castle jutted at odd angles above a crumbling blue canyon. Reno didn’t think about the consequences. He just gave chase, just like he’d been doing. It was only once they landed did he realize where their wild dog chase had taken them. He didn’t even need Rude’s commentary.

“Reno. We’re home.”

And so they were. At this short distance, there was no mistaking the castle from which Reno’s brother would never return. “This was the Fountain Plaza,” Reno breathed. He shook his head. “You know what? No. There’s no time to get sentimental. Look, she’s got no ship left. We’ve got her.”

But even as they disembarked to corner her, the devil woman glared at them from beneath the folds of her ripped fur coat. The moment they stepped out of the Neo Turk Light, she hefted pieces of her ruined ship and hurled them at Reno’s and Rude’s faces. “You fools!” she howled. “You idiots! Roger and Anita will never see these puppies again- unless it’s on my new coat!”

“You are one crazy old hag,” Reno said. His baton flashed into his hand and batted away a piece of the wreckage.

And then Cruella changed. Darkness whirled around her skeletal body, sweeping up the remaining yelping pups into its evil wind. Her already mad eyes went madder, glowing orange with endless swirls under two immense devil horns, one black and one white. Her whole face twisted into something inhuman, underscored by the furry wings derived from her coat. Topping it off, was a quartet of tiny, yipping Cerberus, fused to her back.

“What the hell?!” Reno breathed. The mutated puppies howled in unison, creating a sonic wave that knocked the two Turks off of their feet. “No one said anything about giant Heartless!” he groused, battering the monster with his nightstick.

“Be quiet and figure out a way to beat it,” ordered Rude. He didn’t need a weapon. Sinking his fists into the thing’s mad orange eyes proved plenty effective.

“Won’t it just pop up somewhere else?” asked Reno, flipping up onto the Heartless’s back. Electricity jolted out of his baton, earning a pained howl from the beast. The monster terrorizing the Third District in Traverse Town came to mind. Rude gave him a look. “Yeah, you’re right, we gotta focus up.”

“What is all this racket?” Green fire erupted between Rude and the Heartless, manifesting into the body of a stately woman with green skin. “You! You are not one of my Heartless!” The staff in her hand glowed green, and Cruella appeared, normal but bedraggled, with her torn coat dangling off one bony shoulder. “Hmm,” sniffed the green woman. “I should have known. You’ve a dark heart indeed, but perhaps a bit too ordinary for my liking.” As Cruella shrieked her protests, the dark fairy opened a corridor of darkness and pushed her through.

“It’s that easy?” Reno asked, bewildered.

“Reno. The puppies,” Rude said. He stepped forward, but the fairy flared her voluminous sleeves out, effectively blocking the Turks from the dogs. 

“Stand back, you fools!” ordered the dark fairy. “These delightful little creatures will prove quite useful… as bait.” She scooped up the whimpering dogs into her arm. For a moment, she cradled them, almost tenderly… and then thorns wrapped around them, forming a tight box around the dogs. Then, with another flash of acid green fire, they were gone.

Reno and Rude stared dumbfounded at the pieces of machinery littering the ground. “What the hell just happened?” Reno declared to the empty air.

“We failed,” Rude pointed out.

Several seconds of awkward silence passed. The puppies Roger and Anita counted on them to find were scattered to the winds, and there was no way the Turks were about to search the worlds to find all of them. Slowly, they inched back towards the Neo Turk Light, ready to return to Traverse Town with their tails between their legs. “Well, I say we go get drunk, ‘cause I’m all out of ideas,” Reno declared. “It’s a shame, though. I was hoping that they’d be so grateful the guy would let me have a chance with that girl.” The thunk of Rude’s fist colliding with the top of his idiot best friend’s head echoed through the Lanes Between.

**Author's Note:**

> One of these days I will write Lea and Reno reuniting. One day.


End file.
